Necromancer Feedback w. Bugs & QoL (Part 2)
Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:25 pm
Hi folks, first of all thank you for your interest once again.
If you haven’t done so please read Part 1 first. While it should not be mandatory to follow along it is recommended.
Let’s dive right in!
2. Spell Queue & Where did my FP go?
As we all know regular casters have a straight forward spell queue: They cast one spell and can queue up another one to be casted after the first one has completed. On a Necromancer however this wouldn’t work.
As we previously discussed the Necro has 2 types of spells, namely shade & pet spells. The reason to have those to begin with is a unique feature that allows it to cast 2 spells at the same time, one of each category. But in order to make this work they need to have a different spell queue system.
How this is accomplished seems to vary from server to server but as a result the Necromancer should be able to queue up a shade & pet spell on top of the already casting spells similar to how a regular caster can queue up a spell as well.
On the surface this seems to work on Eden but in detail it shows a multitude of issues and even an old friend from Phoenix resurfaced that got fixed after my discovery. Namely the dreaded instant spell issue which is especially hurtful on Facilitate Painworking, the quickcast for Necromancers.
For the reasoning behind that I have to correct my earlier statement. The necromancer does not have 2 types of spells but actually 3: Shade, Pet & Instants, like Facilitate Painworking.
And here is where the issues begin. There doesn’t seem to be a 3rd category for Necromancer spells on Eden and with that no extra spell queue for instant spells like Phoenix had after the fix.
This leads to the following problem: If a Necro casts a shade & pet spell and queues up another shade & pet spell as follow up then the entire spell queue is full. Now if that player uses an instant like the con debuffs or Facilitate Painworking they will go on cooldown, cost power but due to the already full spell queue will not be casted.
If you are interested why it attempts to cast the spells in the first place instead of just doing nothing I explained this in Part 1.
This means in a typical RvR scenario in which a Necromancer, like any other caster, has spells queued up for maximum DPS they can not use any instant spells whatsoever, or more likely will attempt to use them, burn through their power in the process and have FP on cooldown without any effect leading to a terrible gameplay experience.
However this is not the only issue with the spell queue system for Necromancers on Eden. There is also the issue that if 2 spells from the CL lines with the same cast time, for example “Shield of Soul” and “Shield of the Elements”, are casted at the same time, the first one will not be applied.
Furthermore if the player starts a pet spell with a very long cast time, for example “Intimacy with the Grave” and then queues up a quicker pet spell, for example "Intimacy with Death” then only the second quicker spell gets casted while the longer spell is not applied. Visually the pet continues casting however.
On a side note, I found it very odd that in this case the second spell gets casted before the first spell even though it is queued afterwards, indicating that they are not in the same spell queue or a vastly different system is used altogether.
Without insight to the code I can only speculate why this happens nor can I provide proper solutions. Nonetheless casts should not simply vanish to thin air, especially because as mentioned in Part 1 they always cost power regardless of the actual outcome.
Furthermore instants should have their own spell queue or whatever else is necessary to make sure that Facilitate Painwork always works as this is a vital component to the Necromancer in RvR.
Thank you for reading and once again sorry for the lengthy post, stay tuned for part 3!
If you haven’t done so please read Part 1 first. While it should not be mandatory to follow along it is recommended.
Let’s dive right in!
2. Spell Queue & Where did my FP go?
As we all know regular casters have a straight forward spell queue: They cast one spell and can queue up another one to be casted after the first one has completed. On a Necromancer however this wouldn’t work.
As we previously discussed the Necro has 2 types of spells, namely shade & pet spells. The reason to have those to begin with is a unique feature that allows it to cast 2 spells at the same time, one of each category. But in order to make this work they need to have a different spell queue system.
How this is accomplished seems to vary from server to server but as a result the Necromancer should be able to queue up a shade & pet spell on top of the already casting spells similar to how a regular caster can queue up a spell as well.
On the surface this seems to work on Eden but in detail it shows a multitude of issues and even an old friend from Phoenix resurfaced that got fixed after my discovery. Namely the dreaded instant spell issue which is especially hurtful on Facilitate Painworking, the quickcast for Necromancers.
For the reasoning behind that I have to correct my earlier statement. The necromancer does not have 2 types of spells but actually 3: Shade, Pet & Instants, like Facilitate Painworking.
And here is where the issues begin. There doesn’t seem to be a 3rd category for Necromancer spells on Eden and with that no extra spell queue for instant spells like Phoenix had after the fix.
This leads to the following problem: If a Necro casts a shade & pet spell and queues up another shade & pet spell as follow up then the entire spell queue is full. Now if that player uses an instant like the con debuffs or Facilitate Painworking they will go on cooldown, cost power but due to the already full spell queue will not be casted.
If you are interested why it attempts to cast the spells in the first place instead of just doing nothing I explained this in Part 1.
This means in a typical RvR scenario in which a Necromancer, like any other caster, has spells queued up for maximum DPS they can not use any instant spells whatsoever, or more likely will attempt to use them, burn through their power in the process and have FP on cooldown without any effect leading to a terrible gameplay experience.
However this is not the only issue with the spell queue system for Necromancers on Eden. There is also the issue that if 2 spells from the CL lines with the same cast time, for example “Shield of Soul” and “Shield of the Elements”, are casted at the same time, the first one will not be applied.
Furthermore if the player starts a pet spell with a very long cast time, for example “Intimacy with the Grave” and then queues up a quicker pet spell, for example "Intimacy with Death” then only the second quicker spell gets casted while the longer spell is not applied. Visually the pet continues casting however.
On a side note, I found it very odd that in this case the second spell gets casted before the first spell even though it is queued afterwards, indicating that they are not in the same spell queue or a vastly different system is used altogether.
Without insight to the code I can only speculate why this happens nor can I provide proper solutions. Nonetheless casts should not simply vanish to thin air, especially because as mentioned in Part 1 they always cost power regardless of the actual outcome.
Furthermore instants should have their own spell queue or whatever else is necessary to make sure that Facilitate Painwork always works as this is a vital component to the Necromancer in RvR.
Thank you for reading and once again sorry for the lengthy post, stay tuned for part 3!